


paving hell with good intentions

by orphan_account



Series: to the power of three [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Gen, Q is a Holmes, mycroft is so lonely poor bby
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-05
Updated: 2014-10-05
Packaged: 2018-02-20 00:30:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2408552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are relationships. And then there are relationships.</p>
<p>Six people who have shaped Sherlock Holmes’ life, from a wild-eyed madman to a former army doctor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	paving hell with good intentions

**Author's Note:**

> this one was a little hard because i’m venturing into canon territory here. but anyway. AS A QUICK DISCLAIMER: i love molly. molly is my bae. however, she is not sherlock’s bae. keep that in mind.
> 
> this is way longer than usual and i am proud. however my style is all over the place ignore please and thank
> 
> respectful corrections, comments and kudos are fallen over with delight, etc. etc.: you know the drill.
> 
> i totally stole the title from jane eyre shhh

... _six. moriarty_...

James Moriarty was the one person in the world that understood Sherlock most; he was also the one person in the world that understood him least.

The brains, of course, were the first thing that comes to mind; the brilliance, but with it the boredom.

The foundation of Moriarty’s madness was partly what Sherlock could understand- boredom and vanity and the feeling that everyone was below him- but partly what he could not- the craze for attention, the need to be noticed and most of all entertained. (Privately Sherlock wondered how he would have managed if he had turned his mind to good- perhaps another Sherlock Holmes. There was a thought.)

And yes, he knew what Donovan said behind his back, knew that they all thought he’d turn killer any moment now, and he was not entirely sure that it would never have happened. (If the two men had never encountered each other, he thought that maybe, just maybe, those predictions might have come true- but that was something he didn’t like to think about.)

(Dying had been a boring side effect for Moriarty, clearly- his terms of his own death were to take his only equal with him.)

On the roof, that terrible afternoon, Sherlock had felt a plummeting sense of- what was it? Perhaps it was dread, that he would have to leave everyone and everything that loved him best in the world behind. Perhaps it was guilt, or apprehension- he had known what was going to happen, had gone to meet the wild-eyed genius with the knowledge of what he had to do. Perhaps it was panic, that this one man had pushed him to the point of no return, had him with his back against a wall. Sherlock was not one for following rules- he did not take kindly to being forced to do anything.

Perhaps it was all of them.

But mostly it was the feeling of falling.

It was a horrible feeling, his stomach pressing against his ribs and wind rushing at his face and eyes and mouth until he felt as if he’d be dead before he even got to the bottom. He was facing the ground and, for a moment, allowed himself to be afraid, bracing for the blow of concrete that never came.

( _We Holmes boys must have a thing for falling_ , he thought a fourth of the way down, rather amusedly. _How ironic_.)

( _Quentin will be furious_ , he thought halfway down, still amused, though with a touch of regret. _So will Mycroft_. They were not the ones he was worried about, though.)

( _The papers_ , he thought three fourths of the way down, _will have a field day with this_. He was considerably less amused at that thought.)

( _Goodbye, London_ , he thought at the bottom. _I shall see you soon_.)

... _five. lestrade_...

Lestrade was the other half of the most uncomplicated relationship in Sherlock’s life.

This was because, to be honest, they had a sort of pattern, a rhythm that Sherlock knew was coming every time he heard Lestrade’s step on the stairs.

The pattern wasn’t the same all the time, but it mostly began with a crime. Lestrade would be stumped, as Sherlock often reminded him, would come to 221B Baker Street and beg for help, although with more dignity than one might expect. There would be a little bit of banter, and if Sherlock was interested he would agree, although with more reluctance than one might expect.

At the scene, there would be more banter, and lots of bossing of Anderson, and some _more_ banter. And then, finally, Sherlock would discover the culprit, forgetting Lestrade’s first name several times in the process. Lestrade would heave a sigh of relief, although with less incredulity than one might expect.

Sherlock, quite frankly, found this pattern soothing. It was less exciting than some of his other patterns, and calmed him a little, exercising his mind a bit without really working it, not to mention the fact that it allowed him to bully Anderson a little along the way. Anything that involved tormenting Anderson was at least endurable in his book.

The one thing that surprised Sherlock is that, somehow, in the many repetitions of this pattern, they had become _friends_ \- not the kind of friends that go out for coffee on alternate Sundays and trade work complaints but the kind of friends that pretended to tolerate you, at best, but were always the first there when something happened.

Predictably, Sherlock didn’t realize until afterwards.

That was the main reason he decided to set aside a little time to track down Lestrade and scare him. It worked better than he expected.

(The hug wasn’t too bad either.)

... _four. molly_...

Sherlock did not actually dislike Molly, despite what some might think.

In fact, he quite appreciated how helpful she was, and how she never asked questions. He also rather admired the fact that she had once broken up with London’s most dangerous genius psychopath, and the fact that she had also once stabbed her boyfriend in the arm- during a wedding. She had saved his life, too, several times, none of which had involved weaponry. The most recent had not even involved an actual presence.

No, Molly Hooper was not ordinary, not at all, and Sherlock knew it.

So it wasn’t that he disliked her, and it wasn’t that he didn’t appreciate her.

It was that he didn’t find her _interesting_.

Because she had cats and would rather stay in than go out and (she liked him) she worked in a morgue. She had lunch breaks and went on dates and (she liked him) watched telly on Monday nights. She was one of the most normal people on the planet, that is before Sherlock had commandeered her and spun her into Molly Hooper, helper and sidekick and savior.

And yes, it had to be said; he could read her like a book wide open and begging to be construed. Understanding Molly was even easier than needling Anderson, and to be honest, Sherlock found it- her- boring.

Many people, including Mycroft on several occasions, had told him before that he was bored far too quickly. He supposed it was true, but honestly, didn’t people get it? How _fast_ his mind moved compared to theirs? He not being purposely rude (although he wasn’t exactly striving towards kindness either); he was just telling the truth. Everyone was so bloody _vacant_.

Even Molly, morgue worker and cat-lover and, most of all, average human being.

She was almost right when she said that she didn’t matter.

... _three. quentin_...

Quentin and Sherlock had always been birds of a feather.

“I’m surprised they’re not twins,” a different friend of Sherlock’s mother’s had said during a luncheon, watching the two peering around an archway, ties already askew. She had meant to simply say something polite, Sherlock knew, but there was some truth to it as well.

For even though Sherlock was a full seven years older, a full four inches taller, a full minute faster at reciting the periodic table, the two really _could_ have been twins. They had the same dark sweep of hair, the same slender, wiry frame, the same pale green eyes that calculate more than glance. The same low, even speech.

(Quentin was perhaps a touch better at actually talking to people. But it didn’t take much to be better than Sherlock at that, as anyone could tell you.)

And so, when Quentin dropped out of university, it surprised everyone- except for Sherlock.

He had, in fact, been the last person to speak to Quentin before he’d disappeared, a fact that Mycroft seemed to begrudge him for- Quentin had been far closer to Sherlock than to the eldest Holmes brother, although there was never as much animosity between them as there was between Sherlock and Mycroft. Quentin was their safety blanket- they spoke through him and acted through him and dragged him along as a peacemaker whenever they had to go somewhere together.

That is, until he had left.

Even Sherlock never really learned what Quentin had done, wandering around Europe with hardly anything more than the clothes on his back. That was one thing his little brother kept from him- no. It was the _beginning_ of things his little brother kept from him, the first of several.

To be fair, they were both growing up, and could not be expected to stay so close. And besides, whenever they were together, it was always as if they’d never been apart, sharp bouncing exchanges and lots of absent ideas tossed back and forth. They spoke to each other how they wished they could speak to others; it was like watching a man converse with himself.

So Sherlock didn’t mind, not so much.

He was the first to know when Quentin became Q anyway.

... _two. mycroft_...

Mycroft had never been close with his brothers.

“I don’t like him, but I sure love him,” Sherlock had heard a friend of his mother’s say at a dinner party once when he was young, and that was the premise of his and Mycroft’s relationship. In fact, sometimes Sherlock was not sure that he even _loved_ his brother- if so, it was a brotherly love tempered with a good deal of hate.

Because this was the thing, and neither of them were going to deny it: they had never _tried_ to be friends. Even when they were very young, before Quentin was even an idea, Sherlock’s main source of entertainment had been long, petty arguments with his elder brother. With them, content seemed to be irrelevant. A quarrel about one thing would blend into another about something else, until someone- usually their mother- would step in with a firm “ _boys_!”

No, they had never tried, and if asked, both would say that they didn’t care to.

This didn’t change, not as they grew older and Mycroft took a prestigious job with the government and Sherlock moved to London, living off cases and copious amounts of nicotine. There was still the arguing, only more drawn-out and by texts rather than face-to-face. (In fact, the longest time they’d gone not talking to each other was one hundred and sixty-eight days. They both counted.)

But then Quentin had pulled his disappearing act, with not so much as a word to either brother or parent, and in the process inadvertently brought his family closer than- well, ever. One month, Sherlock actually called his parents _twice_ , a fact that surprised both parties. (Granted, once was to inquire about whether they had kept a certain book of his- they hadn’t- and neither lasted longer than ten minutes, but a call was a call was a call.)

After Quentin’s return, though, the relationship between the brothers was hardly any better- Mycroft, alone in his stainless-steel flat, pretended not to be hurt at how Quentin had hardly said hello before disappearing again, and Quentin and Sherlock, quoting bits of newspaper articles at each other and ordering take-away, pretended not to notice how hurt their brother really was.

(To be honest, Sherlock felt a teeny bit bad for Mycroft- he had always, always been alone. The only person he really had in the way of friends was Anthea, who was paid. And all right, Sherlock didn’t have too many friends either, but he at least had Quentin, and Lestrade to shout at, and his cases to focus on. Mycroft’s job ran on how polished he was at lying.)

_This_ , Sherlock thought, glancing at his phone yet again as Quentin set things on fire in the kitchen, _this is what Mycroft and I are. Silence and pretending and delicately masked arguments._

He went to join Quentin.

And so it went.

... _one. john_...

John Hamish Watson was, without a doubt, the one person that had affected Sherlock’s life the most.

He was a perfect assistant, a flatmate, and a best friend, braver than anyone Sherlock knew, not to mention a damn good doctor. John was the first person that was unrelated to him and didn’t mind his quirks, at least not too much, the first person that knew him so well he could speak for him and had saved his life so many times he stopped counting and-

The first person Sherlock killed for.

Because his cases, while rather dangerous, hardly ever came down to murder, at least not with Sherlock behind the trigger. A typical case would end in him handing the criminal over to Lestrade and getting him neatly incarcerated, any messy loose ends tied up. And when it did, when Sherlock was the responsible for someone’s death, it usually wasn’t personal- for the general good of England and all that.

He’d gotten used to that while he was away from London.

So.

Magnussen had been a first.

If it had been for anyone else, Sherlock would have been terrified at how easy it was, at how he had no regrets afterwards, even when he was in the plane on the way to mostly certain death. Because John was safe, and that was _really_ what mattered to Sherlock, when you got down to the heart of it.

There had been a silent war waging inside his head that morning, looking down on the runway falling lower and lower below him. It had gone something like:

Sherlock: You’re going to die.

Sherlock: But John’s safe.

Sherlock: Yes, but you’re going to _die_.

Sherlock: Yes, but _John’s safe_.

The second Sherlock had won that one.

Both of them got used to that too.


End file.
